Social movements are often very influential across groups of people, and art is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to evoke those ideas. Throughout Chicano/a history, women were not offered a place in activism due to years of machismo and cultural stereotypes. Women who went against the norm were outcast, even called out as betraying the movement. In response, women started rebel in new ways, one of which was journalism. Maylei Blackwell writes that “the production of a new political identity for Chicana feminists involved not merely reclaiming historical narratives to reflect women’s political identities but also producing them” (102). Art became a form of producing that identity. The Hijas de Cuauhtémoc started a newspaper in which they published declarations and revolutionary manifestos, embracing journalism as an art form to spread their agenda (Blackwell). Furthermore, Alice bag uses music to call out police brutality against people of color in America. Her music video for “White Justice” portrays unarmed Latinx people, some who appear to simply be playing music in a park, violently pushed out by armed policemen with guns and tear gas (2:50, Bag). She continues this idea by writing about the violence she witnessed against her people, recalling that “that day, I saw my knights like the other people in my life: their capacity for good matched by their capacity for evil” (Bag, 70). This powerful message that continues the idea presented by Blackwell, that Chicana activist identity is one that stems from reflection and new experiences.
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